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The Davao Bombing, President Duterte, and Law

This morning I saw an email in my inbox from the US embassy in the Philippines about a bombing in Davao. I signed up for the newsletter when I used to live in Antipolo, near Manila. I of course quickly did a search to see what had happened and found an article on MSN with the details of the incident. It’s not clear who set off the bomb yet, but regardless, it is a tragedy and my thoughts go out to the families who are suffering now.

I took a look at the comments section to see which direction the conversation was going. Davao is in Mindanao, an area of the Philippines where Islamic terrorist groups have a presence, including Abu Sayyaf, which is linked to Islamic State, and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (yeah, MILF, LOL). I thought I would see the usual set of comments about how all Muslims are evil and Islam is destroying the world, but the first comment, while equally ridiculous, was something I wasn’t expecting. Some guy was saying that “America” (because he was elected as our representative, apparently) supports what the new president in the Philippines is doing.

//Unfortunately, I embedded the Facebook comment on the article instead of taking a screenshot and the person who posted the original comment deleted it.

If you’re not too familiar with what’s going on in Philippines politics, the new president, Duterte, has literally encouraged police officers to kill as many people as they can, if they feel that they are criminals. If you think America as a whole supports extrajudicial killings and has no interest in the due process of law, then you are mistaken. People in the US protest constantly because they feel that they are not being given due process under the law. Black Lives Matter is just the most obvious example. Extrajudicial killings are absolutely not what America is about, and it’s a dangerous road to go down.